


Ripples of Unease

by brutti_ma_buoni



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Background Relationships, F/M, Misses Clause Challenge, Surveillance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 18:57:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13060116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brutti_ma_buoni/pseuds/brutti_ma_buoni
Summary: Beverley has a tip-off, and Sahra is the best person to deal with it. Sometimes, duty just has to involve getting wet.





	Ripples of Unease

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mechanonymouse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechanonymouse/gifts).



When Sahra was young, you had to be able to swim to be a police officer. They dropped the requirement not long before she went through Training College, which was annoying in a way. Knowing, even as a kid, that the police just might turn out to be the future she wanted, she had persevered to a point of competence. It took a lot of persuading to get her father to consent to continued swimming lessons after her high school stopped offering them. But since Sahra was a good daughter, and one who didn’t tend to opt for expensive and awkward hobbies, she’d been allowed to keep it up after enough nagging. And, in fact, she still did, it being only sensible to keep up with aerobic exercise that didn’t bore her to death, considering her life might depend on speed and lung capacity someday. 

All of which was why Sahra had in fact got a couple of (modest navy blue, almost police issue) cozzies at home, and when Bev called to offer her a tip, she could take advantage. Which in turn was why this promising scion of the Metropolitan Police, London’s finest, and only recently added to the Weird Shit Squad, until when her career had been going quite nicely thank you… was spending the evening wallowing in the river Wandle, with a river goddess. 

The Wandle wasn’t the worst of London’s rivers. It didn’t stink, and it looked pretty healthy. A bit shallow to take discreet dips in, for sure, but at least it was dark for this stakeout. Surprisingly warm in the river, too, but Sahra was pretty certain that was something Bev was contributing. Even in June, a nice stony stream bed wasn’t somewhere she’d cheerfully hang out after midnight without some kind of magical protection. (Or a wetsuit, to be fair.)

“Don’t think I’ve met your Wandle,” she said, after a bit, because stakeouts are dull, and there was manifestly no one up at the retail warehouses which had been the locations for a nocturnal line in people smuggling, at least according to Bev’s information. (Why this had to be a Falcon procedure was somewhat obscure to Sahra, especially considering Peter was at his Mum’s birthday tonight and not able to lounge about in rivers with his girlfriend. But apparently when your informant was a goddess, passing on a tip from a sister goddess, there were protocols to be observed. Hence the swimsuit, although asking whether she had one had made Nightingale blush, which was fairly hilarious after the whole protocols lecture.) 

“Nah,” said Bev. “Wand’s at college.” She sighed, slightly. “Mama’s not a fan of postgrad study, but I reckon Wand’ll stay there as long as she can. Three degrees, now, and never seems to want to come home. Says you can’t get the beer, these days.”

Sahra inclined her head respectfully downstream, in the direction of the shell of the Ram Brewery. Young’s moving out to Bedford had been quite the blow to local pride, one of the last famous industries of South London. “There’s Sambrook’s,” she said. She might not be an expert in the stuff, but coppers banging on about beer was one of those social situations she’d learned to prepare for. And besides, the craft breweries popping up all over town were quite interesting. She found it a bit like stamp collecting, full of daft rarities and unlikely terminology for what was basically barley water. Wandle beer wasn’t nearly the most obscure she could reference under pressure.

“Wand hates artisanal brewing,” said Bev, flatly. “Or did, last time we chatted. ‘Bout a year back, doubt she’s changed her mind. She’s a stubborn cow.” That knocked that topic on the head. Not that Sahra was really aiming for some girly bonding out of this evening, but the talk was keeping her mind off the possibility of fish, and other unknown river dwellers. Water snails? They were real, right?

Nope. Rather desperately, she caught a conversational thread. “Must be weird, not seeing your sister for months, and then she calls you up with a tipoff. I can’t get away from Nala and Hani, seems like. And the boys are round most evenings.”

“Didn’t know you had brothers.” Bev didn’t sound exactly riveted. 

“Three,” said Sahra, and was intensely relieved when Bev didn’t follow up with the usual Londoner reflex, _Wow, big family._ Well, obviously she didn’t. Sahra hadn’t counted, but she was pretty sure Mama Thames’s daughters were well into double figures, even if you never did see them all in the same room. 

Bev raised one foot till it broke the water surface, and wiggled her toes, contemplatively. “No brothers for me. Obviously.” 

“No,” agreed Sahra. Not that she fully understood the biological relationship, or lack thereof, between Father Thames’s boys and Mama Thames’s daughters. But they certainly didn’t look much alike, and rivers didn’t have genes, so… _Not my area of expertise_ she thought, definitively. Way more so than craft beers. One for Peter to follow up, if he fancied it. 

“It’s not like I don’t know men,” said Bev, startlingly. 

“Hmhm,” was all Sahra managed, caught off guard. This sounded… confessional? Surely Bev had enough sisters to get girly chitchat out the way without calling up police officers for some riparian surveillance mission? 

Bev flipped up her second foot, and disappeared below the river surface, briefly. Breaking the ripples with her face, she continued immediately, “Just, I’ve not really had a long term one, you know?”

“Mhmhhm,” said Sahra, mixing it up a bit with the non-committal expressions of interest. Peter was “long term”, was he? Okay. 

“I think he is,” Bev answered the surprise on Sahra’s face. “I think so. Or maybe. Or at least… worth seeing how it goes. But it gives me a problem, doesn’t it?”

She paused as a bright light swept the furthest warehouse wall, but it followed a familiar sweep that said yet another driver had got the wrong turn off the relief road, and was reversing in a hurry. It wasn’t anything they need keep quiet about. “He’s… not getting any younger,” she said, finally. 

Sahra was a year or two younger than Peter, but she’d never thought of him as ageing, exactly. Nightingale, now… she’d heard some things, and drawn some conclusions, and decided not to ask anyone about how the guvnor definitely was getting younger (and indeed, what they were going to do when he became a teenager). But that wasn’t important right now. She realised she’d been too quiet, for too long, after that breakthrough confidence. Bev dunked herself again, and didn’t come up for a lung-busting few minutes. 

Well, at least it gave Sahra time to work out what she was fretting about. “Are you getting older?” she said, bluntly. 

“Ish,” said Bev. “Not as fast as you lot. We tend to find a good age and… stick, I think. Never known a river god get really creaky, you know?”

“You _don’t_ know?” Sahra realised that was rude, and shrugged an apology, but Bev was already nodding then shaking her head, confusing. 

“You’d think, right? You got to assume we know how it works, goddessing. But there’s no rule book. And Mama’s just working it out. It’s a bit… awkward, talking with the other river families. We don’t like looking like newbies.”

“I could look it up,” Sahra offered, spontaneously. “Just in case, you know, we might know something.” We, meaning the Folly. She was getting dangerously used to that concept. 

Bev’s eyes gleamed bright in the darkness, with gratitude, and also with reflected headlights. Not a wrong turning, this time. “Laters,” she said, and ducked herself yet again, leaving Sahra to watch three ugly, beefy blokes open the back of a transit and chuck two girls out the back, to be transferred to a bashed up Audi which followed the van into this grey industrial space. The girls were knock-kneed with something unhealthy, looking skinny, and dazed, and all kinds of bad. These weren’t looking forward to a bright new life in London; this wasn’t that kind of smuggling operation. These were going to be working off their debt the old-fashioned – bad, unwilling – way. Sahra wondered how the river wasn’t boiling around her, such was her sudden rage at the men who did this, over and over, to girls who just wanted a chance.

Wandle’s information, via Bev, had been that this was a small but regular operation, couple of times a week, probably the end of a chain, not the big boys. And that none of that had been good news for a girl whose name she’d never caught, who hadn’t been quite so doped as this lot, and who tried to run, but tripped into the river instead. She hadn’t died, but she’d been forced to inhale a good measure of Wandle before she’d been subdued. And apparently, that wasn’t good manners for South London rivers, and had spurred Wandle to dob in the pigs who did that to her. 

Sahra took a good mental note of indexes and descriptions, and as soon as the van took off, radioed them in for the more orthodox surveillance units waiting in the industrial estate. These girls, at least, should be saved, and hopefully they’d shake down some of the thugs for a bigger bust in future. 

“Thanks,” she said to Bev, after the middle distance had filled with sirens, and she’d regained the river path, found her shoes, and started considering how bad the drive home in a wet swimsuit might feel. “Appreciate your help in all this.” She felt like there should be more, for saving women from predators, and for using divine powers for public good. But she couldn’t think of anything suitably pompous. So she just added, “And if you want me to do that research-“

Beverly Brook didn’t leave the river. Didn’t even really look up. She shook her head. “Best not. I don’t want him thinking about this yet. It’s one I need to work out, I reckon. See what my options are.”

 _Him_ , meaning Peter, obviously. Bev apparently didn’t think much of Sahra’s stealth research capabilities. Though it was probably realistic, in the claustrophobic confines of the Folly. _Options_ , meaning… what, though? How exactly did a goddess/human relationship work out? 

Sahra had read legends from a fair few global cultures which touched on this sort of thing. She was fairly sure the answer was _badly_. 

And the shiver that took her was about more than the sudden awareness of the impact of a London summer breeze on soggy Lycra.


End file.
